Rage of Mages II: Necromancer

The Good
I remember those days back in 1999, first or second month of my high school. I remember the series of medium quality games sold for American equivalent of about 7-8 dollars. One of those games appeared to be Rage of Mages 2: Necromancer. After some reading in press I decided to buy it and now I must say it was a good move. ROM 2 in my very humble opinion can be described as a very (I'll say that again - VERY) limited version of Baldur's Gate. I don't really know why, it's just that it somehow reminds me of those adventures on the Sword Coast. ROM 2 is one of those games which don't really have astonished graphics, splendid music, thousands of NPCs, dozens of spells and eloquent and intriguing storyline. But there is something in this game I find attractive.

ROM 2 is a product of high quality when it comes to products placed on the same price shelf. There are quite few monsters (all of them come in 5 different variants, each one looking a little bit different and significantly stronger) and the terrain is rather live, trees are moving, shadows change the direction as the time of day passes etc.

One great feature of ROM 2, created in far better way than even in Baldur's Gate, is what we can call "level of terrain". I rarely find hills, mountains, valleys and ditches so well done. In the editor, included on the cd, creating them is very easy and the result is great. Player often sees geographically realistic maps with plenty of room to introduce different tactics.

When it comes to tactics, the mage has some space to work here, different spells enable him to act in different way, in last levels player is so strong that he can virtually complete the whole level alone. Too bad that in contrary, warrior is extremely difficult to play due to lack of healing potions in the early stages of game.

ROM 2 also has quite nice set of items to gather. Just like monsters (or types of items in Diablo II) the further you go, the better arms you can obtain. They are very similar to each other when it comes to physical look, they simply have the same graphics with different colors. Like magic items in Diablo series, equipment here can have a set of random properties, usually about 2 (I'm not quite sure though). This greatly increases the number of items available.

The Bad
ROM 2 may have some nice features but it has never been a great hit.

No one can say that the graphics is good, even though it doesn't make you turn back and run away, it's simply bad.

While music is quite acceptable (not one of those which player turns off after 5 minutes), sound effects are rather limited. Monsters have different sounds but the overall amount of effects is quite low..

Storyline is as linear as possible, players has to accomplish a main mission to get access to another main and some less relevant quests, when he finishes the main one, another one is available etc. While objectives of missions aren't really that obvious (although it isn't anything extraordinary as well), player cannot interact with NPCs friendly to him. There are many cities or villages on the map, some even have it's inhabitants and buildings, yet it's impossible to talk to them.

This feature may be considered as either advantage or disadvantage, depending on the look. Multiplayer here is very poor. I have never really seen anyone playing this game online. So what's so good about it? The fact that ROM 2 has great potential to be quite nice online game. The problem is that Nival didn't make any use of it. I found multiplayer here rather nice, it consists of several cities on map each one with shop, where player can buy items, and an inn full of quests. While those quests are rather obvious (kill a group of monsters, protect city, escort a villager somewhere, deliver an item somewhere etc.) it's really fun to play it. However due to technical reasons we prefer Diablo than ROM. When player dies, all his items lay in a bag in the place where he was defeated. How can a warrior without any equipment get it back from a band of 20 orcs? But the main problem is that Nival could have made a server where people could meet and play this game. Something like Battle.net or Arena.net. Indeed it is very expensive, especially for company from Eastern Europe, but could gather large amount of players. Too bad it isn't present there though.

The Bottom Line
This game has something that makes you want to play it. It isn't exactly the same desire which haunts you when you see Doom 3 or Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion shortcut on the desktop, but it has some influence on you. If you want to play a quite well done game, with some bugs, poor graphics and sound but with nice maps and quite good set of items, this is the game for you (especially if you have slower computer). ROM 2 shows that everyone can make game, not only American, British, French or German companies. Maybe not the best ones but the first US game had 2 colors, right? ;)